‘Only China and Pakistan could prod New Delhi’

Paying tribute at the memorial for the IPKF that killed more than 6000 Eezham Tamils in the late 1980s, the visiting Defence Secretary of the New Delhi establishment offered training programme for 1400 personnel of the genocidal military of Sri Lanka in the Indian defence academies. Indian Express on Sunday reported that a key outcome of Russian president recently meeting New Delhi’s prime minister was India helping Colombo’s nuclear power generation, to counter Chinese power hold in South Asia. Meanwhile, the thrust of a recent article by India’s former envoy in UK, Kuldip Nayar implies that rather than the merit of the national question of Eezham Tamils attracting Indian attention, only the involvement of China and Pakistan may prod it to do something.

Feature by TamilNet political commentator in Colombo:

“India did not want to be misunderstood by the Sri Lankan government. But if Colombo continues to encourage China and Pakistan, India would have to do something to safeguard its interests,” Kuldip Nayar wrote.

“The alienated Tamils will once again organise themselves into a force to harass or even fight the government. New Delhi may also be faced to stand by them because of domestic political compulsions. The DMK-run Tamil Nadu is crucial in the survival of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition government,” Kuldip Nayar further said.

But according to Shiv Shankar Menon, New Delhi’s security advisor and a key person who handled New Delhi’s interests in the genocidal war that in his words “set an example”, the fastest growing Tamil Nadu having concerns for Tamils in the island is a matter of the past. The same confidence was aired by a former Indian intelligence bigwig in a recent meeting he had with the diaspora in London.

The idea is bargaining the island’s ‘economic integration’ with India by abetting Colombo with its genocide.

A Chennai-based businessman, N. S. Venkataraman, who also has business in Singapore, said this month: “it is high time that the focus of Sri Lanka should shift from political strives to economic and industrial possibilities.”

Nandini Consultancy Centre, Chemical Engineers and Project Consultants of Mr. Vekataraman was eying on ilmenite, graphite, other down-stream minerals, medicinal herbs and technical education in the island.

Harbouring any thought ‘economic grab first, politics could be seen later’, will find double retaliation in the island, especially with Indian business. Evoking anti-Indian sentiments among the Sinhalese is very easy for the political elements in the south and Eezham Tamils will find no reason to welcome India. Rather it may be more advantageous for Eezham Tamils to deal with China and Pakistan.

Unless the Indian approaches to the island are coupled with recognition of the nation of Eezham Tamils, and politics doing justice to the national question in the island, India could make no headway either in economy or in defence.

In recent times, Indian politicians, extra-parliamentary elements like Shiv Shankar Menon, and former diplomats like Kuldip Nayar, choose to favour a phrase “Tamils in the North” of the island, whenever they make public statements or write articles. They have stopped saying North and East.

It is not by accident that these diplomats drop the East, an integral part of the homeland of Eezham Tamil nation. They have already made a pact with genocidal Colombo on ditching the Eezham Tamils in the East permanently. Now it is only a matter of time for them to say, look the demography of the North have also changed, so accept the reality and be subservient.

“Even if the LTTE re-emerges, it would come, not from any other side, but within Sri Lanka. It is up to Sri Lanka to leave no room for such a comeback,” Shiv Shankar Menon said in an interview to Sunday Observer this month.

How Colombo has understood this kind of statement is obvious to anyone watching the military built up of it. But how could Shiv Shankar Menon forget that India is equally responsible in ‘leaving no room’ by accepting the national question a national question.

Mahinda Rajapaksa government was primarily spoiled by the establishment in New Delhi and by Mr. Karunanidhi in Chennai. India has no business to talk about a “united Sri Lanka.” The very interference begins from there.

At least at the end of the war, rather than erasing out the word Eezham, had they conceded the fact that the nation of Eezham Tamils was a political reality in the island needing political justice, Rajapaksa couldn’t have continued the genocide.

After predominant involvement in an internationally abetted war, Menon’s echo of the Rajapaksa joke of ‘home grown solution’ grows how in the Tamil land, is known to everyone.

Kuldip Nayar laments for Rajapaksa scraping Tamil version of the Sri Lanka anthem. But whether in Tamil or Sinhala, the Eezham Tamils are not interested in ‘singing’ another’s anthem.

Menon, who is still “learning” about the Maoist struggle of his own people, thinks that he knows better about Eezham Tamils at home than their kith and kin in the diaspora. Menon said, “The Tamil Diaspora has its own memories. But it’s different to what exactly takes place back home.”

“We could handle our affairs ourselves,” Menon said in the context of handling the Eezham Tamil question. But serious political observers think that long handling of Indian affairs by Menon’s ilk, besides bungling the northern frontiers, is now going to harm peace and harmony in the south, including the people of the Menons.

Meanwhile, Prince Rahul Gandhi, visiting Chennai recently said: "We are concerned that enough is not being done for Sri Lankan Tamils by the government there."

According to Indian Express, he said he would take up the matter with "appropriate persons" at the Centre and see that Sri Lankan Tamils got justice.

People who care for words and not deeds pay much attention to what the prince has said.

Just a few days before the final carnage in the Vanni war, the Queen Mother wooing votes in Tamil Nadu said that everything worrying Tamils would end within a few days.

Sometimes back, the US Asst Secretary of State, in the context of the island said that ‘some responsibility’ for war crimes is needed for reconciliation.

In a demonstrative spirit, Rahul Gandhi may try with ‘appropriate persons’ in at least replacing the establishment’s extra-parliamentary elements that habitually ditch the Tamil question by fresh thinking people who were not a party to the war crimes.

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